Benedict and the Buddha: Monasticism in the West

The transmission of Buddhadharma into Western culture is only a few decades old. And as Buddhism begins to take root and grow, it is appropriate to reflect on what’s working and what’s not. In this piece, Mandala contributor Donna Lynn Brown considers how Buddhist monasticism is making the transition and offers some thoughts on its development.

When Prince Siddhartha witnessed the three famous signs that life is suffering – sickness, old age, and death – they alone did not launch him on his spiritual quest. One more sight was needed. Glimpsing the robes and shaved head of a monk, the future Buddha understood that suffering could be transcended. It was this ray of hope that led him to seek the path. Since that time, Sangha – ordained nuns and monks – have traditionally been the ones to preserve the teachings for future generations as well as teach the Dharma. Didn’t the Buddha say that for the Dharma to flourish, we need the “fourfold assembly” – monks and nuns as well as female and male lay practitioners?

But in the modern West, many Buddhists seem to view monks, nuns, and their institutions as something that makes sense primarily in Asia. While Western donors pour funds into monasteries and nunneries in the East, they provide considerably less financial and moral support to Western monastics, who sometimes struggle to obtain even the four basic requirements: food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Dharma centers for lay people proliferate, yet for monastics, there are few places to train, practice, study or live in community. If actions speak louder than words, Buddhists place little value on having ordained Sangha in the West.

While experts often contrast the struggles of Western monastics with the supports their Asian counterparts receive and the important roles they play, few observers look at the actual situation of Buddhism in the West, and the roles that monastics could play here in coming decades and even centuries. That question relates to the challenges facing Buddhism here. What are those challenges, and how can monastics help us overcome them?

The Western Environment

The Inner Environment: Fragmentation. Outside of enclaves of conservative Christianity and Judaism, individualism and consumer culture have led to a fragmentation of Western spirituality. Rather than following any religion or system in its entirety, most modern seekers blend techniques or beliefs into their own personal growth “cocktail.” Concepts with appeal are adopted out of context; difficult ideas or practices are dropped; no authority is followed. My spiritually-oriented neighbor, for instance, may combine mindfulness with humanistic values, chi gong and Jungian psychology. That may be just right for her: the good side of fragmentation is that some very beneficial practices, like mindfulness and compassion meditation, have spread well beyond Dharma centers. The disadvantage is that deeper practices requiring years of commitment – coherent systems leading to a final result, along with rituals or practices that benefit others – are being taken up by very few people.

No longer is it worth asking how many Westerners will become Buddhists: the relevant question is how many, even among self-identified Buddhists, will support, practice or pass on actual lineages of teaching and practice. It may be so few that the cross-generational transmission of systems that can lead to enlightenment is at risk. This fragmentation is impacting all mainstream religions, not just Buddhism.

The Outer Environment: Instability. When considering any future longer than a decade or two, we need to take into consideration the impact of ecological stresses, economic troubles and natural (as well as human-caused) disasters, all of which can be expected to displace populations and affect social and institutional stability. These challenges will arise in the context of the already-occurring disintegration of the social contract in some countries, which is reducing community resilience and governments’ abilities to mitigate problems. Many regions could be impacted; one that is particularly threatened by disasters, for example, is the “left coast” of North America, an area where Buddhists are concentrated. Concerns include the potential impairment of Buddhist organizations, alongside the dispersal of leaders, teachers, practitioners, translation groups and donors; reduced capacity to invite teachers from afar or to host community events like teachings, empowerments and group practices; and damage to libraries, web-based resources and the like. In addition, if particular regions are badly enough impacted, social structures, infrastructure and education systems across the board may be damaged, with unpredictable consequences for everyone.

Buddhism has spread West in an outer environment that has been supportive, accommodating, and easy to negotiate, but this could change. Buddhism may in fact withstand instability less well than other religions in the West, because it has fewer adherents and resources, and is not as widely distributed geographically.

What Can Monastics Do?

Given this environment, what can monastic communities contribute to the maintenance and spread of the Buddha’s teachings?

First, they can preserve knowledge and lineages. Both fragmentation and instability pose threats to transmission, by limiting the number of accomplished scholars and practitioners, and by disrupting the systems used to train teachers as well as to disseminate teachings, empowerments, practice instructions, support and so on. In this regard, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s translator and an expert on the transmission of Buddhism to the West, speaking in May 2015, acknowledged that lay people in the West do more practice than in Asia, but commented that “where the monastic tradition can contribute is that the monastics serve as the custodians of knowledge: they are a group of people who are dedicated to ensuring the continuity of the lineage, the transmission and the furthering of knowledge. And that is lacking in the West where everybody does their own thing. If you don’t rely on some kind of body to maintain this, in the long run the quality of the Dharma might be affected.” Aspects of this include safeguarding both individual teachings and a “whole” Buddhism, as well as preventing hybridity.

Why are monastics suited to taking on the bulk of the responsibility for lineages? Long-time monk Ven. George Churinoff stresses the merit of keeping monastic vows. The ethical discipline created by the vows, alongside leaving behind the demands of ordinary life, can form a foundation for monks and nuns to become accomplished scholars and practitioners more quickly than lay people. “By keeping the vows, monastics will always have role in perpetuating the Dharma,” says Ven. George. It was seeing this sight, we should recall, that inspired Prince Siddhartha, and monastics will likely continue to inspire others through pure conduct and full-time devotion to practice.

Yangsi Rinpoche, a geshe and the president of Maitripa College, is also deeply involved in the East-West transmission of Buddhism. He points out another area where monastics have a key role in the West. “Rituals,” said Rinpoche, “are vital for taking care of livings beings and the world. Monks and nuns are the ‘professionals’ who we rely on to do rituals when needed for individuals, groups, society or the environment. It would be hard for lay people to take over that role.” While Westerners sometimes downplay them, in all Buddhist countries, rituals aimed at accomplishing both mundane and supramundane goals are a way for Buddhism to benefit the wider world. The more difficulties that world encounters, the more they may be needed. Monastic communities will almost certainly remain the specialists in ritual.

Another vital role monastic communities can play is that of holding space for a Buddhism that features vibrant community and social engagement. Fragmentation tends to privatize spirituality, but this is not how a “whole” Buddhism will survive, or benefit others, over the long haul. Only communities meet people’s needs for energized group practice, socializing, educating children and young practitioners, and mutual help – and also for reaching out to others. Monastic communities demonstrated this to great effect recently in Nepal, where Kopan Monastery and others responded to devastating earthquakes with quick and effective aid. Monasteries and nunneries can mobilize helpers in a crisis, and their group discipline and ethical conduct are tremendous assets. This not only aids people in the short term; it also builds long-term connections of care between Buddhists and their neighbors. But community activities require resources, organization, people, skills and commitment. Only sizable groups can take them on. Not everyone needs to be ordained: members of intentional communities ought to include lay practitioners and their families as well as monks and nuns. Nevertheless, such communities would likely be strongest with a core of committed, disciplined, ethical monastics.

What Should Monastic Communities Look Like?

While monastic communities may be ideal to take on these roles, will they resemble Asian monasteries? Riding the wave of societal change may require a slightly different profile. So may the fact that lay practitioners play a larger role in the West than they usually have in Asia.

One key goal of monastic communities must be to survive and thrive over the long term. That probably means having some land, growing food and developing the capacity to be off-grid, as well as cultivating practical skills, rather than depending, as in Asia, mainly on donations. Why not rely on the old model of monks practicing, doing rituals, and teaching, while lay people pay the bills? That configuration hails from a stable world of long-term interconnection between monastics and lay families, institutions and the supporters around them. Does the modern West fit that picture? A world of mobility, change and potential upheaval may require a monastic model that is more independent and self-sustaining, even if donations are still needed to get it started.

Intentional communities need residents who commit to staying and making them good places for personal growth and long-term practice. That likely means providing a well-rounded life that balances spiritual practice with opportunities for development in the physical, psychological, cultural and creative spheres. To create sustainable communities with a broad range of activities will require more people and skills than most Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in the West currently have. This suggests that monks and nuns would be best to create adjacent or even mixed communities, and that lay practitioners should also live nearby in order to share work, teachings, practices and other activities. The vinaya and the monastic lifestyle, passed down from the Buddha himself, must be safeguarded. But in the West, co-operation amongst dedicated practitioners, lay and monastic, may make for the most viable communities by allowing for a critical mass of numbers, skills, mentorship and energy.

This may look more like a traditional monastery in Europe than a Buddhist monastery: Christian abbeys often combined religious, intellectual and artistic cultivation with farming, food processing or other economic activities. They did not survive solely on donations from the faithful; in fact, they often contributed to the support of the poor around them. It is a model Buddhists can consider. For 500 years after the fall of Rome, abbeys, convents, and monasteries were islands of civilization in a sea of turmoil, and for another 500, they were the progenitors of a flourishing new world, one that laid the foundations for our own. For these 10 centuries, they gave a home to people interested in the intellect and the spirit, while safeguarding and spreading practical and religious knowledge, maintaining libraries and producing texts, educating lay and religious people, performing rituals, and aiding the sick and needy. They interacted with the world, but tried to keep enough distance to survive the passing storm. And there were many of them, well-distributed geographically, so that when upheavals damaged one, precious knowledge was not lost forever. A community disrupted could later be re-established by monastics from elsewhere, a redundancy crucial to the survival of both religious and practical knowledge throughout the Dark Ages. We may be skidding into a dark age now, and this model bears examination.

A few modern-day Christians, exasperated by all-pervasive secularism, have begun discussing a so-called “Benedict Option,” named after Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism. As the Roman empire collapsed, Benedict established communities of men and women dedicated to prayer, work and study. These eventually blossomed into a pan-European network of monasteries and nunneries. Nowadays, the Benedict Option refers to a variety of forms of intentional Christian communities partially insulated from the secular world. Christianity and Buddhism may differ, but Buddhists also face challenges. And while we have some time, establishing communities that thrive for the long haul could take decades – so the discussion needs to get going.

As the water in our metaphoric pot gradually warms, we might want to notice the temperature before it hits the boiling point. Is a Benedict Option for Buddhists something to think about?

Donna Lynn Brown is a free-lance writer on Buddhist issues and a student at Maitripa College.

Approaching enlightenment is a gradual process, but once you attain it, there’s no going back; when you reach the fully awakened state of mind, the moment you experience that, you remain enlightened forever.